PARALLEL RENDERING OF CURVILINEAR VOLUME DATA

Several volume rendering techniques have been proposed to visualize re gular three-dimensional cartesian data sets. Often curvilinear grids t hat model a problem more accurately are used for analysis, but few tec hniques are available to render curvilinear data sets. This work prese nts a new approach to render cylindrical polar gridded volumes that ar e frequently used in astrophysical system models and computational flu id dynamics. Since the curvilinear grid that serves as input to the re ndering system is the same as that used for analysis, it also provides the ability to directly link the rendering and simulation process. Pa rallel implementation of the algorithm in both SIMD and MIMD environme nts is also explored.